Does creationism belong in public school?

A friend recently emailed me all the letters and Forum
articles that appeared in the Midland Daily News since April. From my
perspective, the writers are not writing about the same thing.

Faith

The first
and most important topic that needs to be addressed when discussing whether
creationism or intelligent design should be taught in our public schools is
faith. Faith is very much the opposite of science.

Faith is
acceptance as truth something that cannot be proven. It is very real, but it is
based on experience rather than the physical world.

We have
faith on a purely human level, when we say “I have faith in you” to a friend
who is undergoing some struggle in life. It jumps to a higher level when we say
we believe in a Being that is beyond our physical reach, whom we normally call
God.

The human
understanding of God is so shrouded in anthropomorphic terms that it is hard to
distinguish between what is being said about God because we are human and who
God really is.

Science is based on factual evidence
and interpretation of those facts. They can be interpreted using analysis as
well as accepted scientific theory to draw conclusions. That’s why
scientists continue to do research, and why scientific discoveries continue to
happen.

The Bible

We people
have numerous beliefs that flow from our faith in God (or lack thereof). One of
the Christian expressions of our faith in God is faith that the Bible is the
Word of God. There is nothing in the Bible that even remotely suggests that God
made a list of writings that belong in the Bible and said that He was the
author of them. Our belief in the Bible as the Word of God comes from a
declaration of bishops in the 4th century (a more definitive list
came later). Before then, the Bible did not exist! So Paul’s reference to
“scriptures” in 2 Timothy (written in the first century) is general, not
referring to the Bible.

Even though
we refer to the Bible as a “book”, it is actually a compilation of numerous
books of various literary styles and forms.None of the
books of the Bible are history, as we think of history, even though manyof them refer to historical events.

There is much of the Bible that is myth. A myth is a story
told to convey a message, in tis case religious truth
about God or humans.

No one was
present at the creation of the world with a pen and pad of paper or a tape
recorder. The first chapter of Genesis tells the story of creation in six days,
but in chapter 2 there is quite a different story of creation. Which one is
true to what really happened? It doesn’t matter, because both stories stem from
different sources of hundreds of years of oral tradition and each conveys a
beautiful message that God created the world and human beings. Both of these
stories are myth.

Evolution

Evolution
is a scientific theory that purports to explain the many varieties of species
and life on this planet and how they came to be. It has nothing to do with the
origin of the world because science is not about ultimate realities. It is
about what can be seen, analyzed, dissected (sometimes) and tested. It has to
do with this world as we sense it. Evolution is a scientific theory.As such it should be taught in the science
classroom.

Creationism
is not science nor is intelligent design. These two subjects do not belong in
the science classroom. They shouldn’t even be taught in the public schools at
all, because they are based on faith.

As a Christian, I don’t believe in
the literal interpretation of myths, but I am quite fascinated that the days of
creation show a progression in the complexity of life over the six days, not
quite the same as the scientific theory of evolution, but evolving nonetheless.
Even the ancient writers knew somehow that life evolved from the simple to
complex.As a person of faith, I believe
that there is a God who created the world and all that is in it, but I leave
the details to God.

Response

Before you respond by writing a
letter to the paper or emaling me or responding on
line, please think about the difference between faith and science. Can the two come together in an amicable way?
Absolutely, that’s the duty of parents, not the job of the public school
teachers.